English. \"Perseverance as a Means to Overcome Your Life's Obstacles\"
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I was born on April 5, 1937, the eldest child of Joseph and rose form a Jewish couple from Brooklyn, New York. Four years later, my sister Dale came along, a happy, harmonious family. We were not, but we got by. My father, joseph Flom, worked for his father at farms, advertising a fine food purveyor in Brooklyn that specialized in retail and wholesale kosher foods such as lox, herring, pickles spreads, dips, herring in other delicious jewish heritage products. He spent his life working 75 hour weeks, needless to say, I didn't see him much, he provided for us, but was exhausted when he dragged himself through the apartment door at night after serving customers, cutting fish and hauling pickle barrels. My father was a nice enough guy, but lacked much in the way of meaningful parenting skills. That job fell to my mother rose thankfully she did it with brains and grace. I needed her wit and wisdom because when I was five and started to speak, it became apparent that I both stuttered and stammered, stuttering. Typically. It starts early in life, but disappears in 80% of the cases. Within three or four years. Mine did not. I started off in an Oxford Jewish school. We spent our mornings learning hebrew and afternoons during our coursework in English. A school day ran nine hours in the pace of the hebrew recitation brought my stuttering to light. One rabbi was particularly impatient when I couldn't get words out, he'd ask a question, and if I couldn't get the words out because of my stuttering, he slapped me on the hand with a ruler spanked me, or even worse, use a belt on my back. My grandfather was a huge supporter of the yeshiva and came in every friday with cash that added up to half the rabbis weekly salary. I've watched him hand out that cash for those men, knowing how brutal they were to me, I quickly developed a loathing for school, and soon the rabbis were having to drag me inside. They treated me worse as a result.